TO-Tech Blog

After seeing this in PC World…

Windows Vista SP2: Readers Report Big Increases in Free Disk Space

…I decided to take some notes when updating the only PC I have running Windows Vista to Service Pack 2 (SP2). Here’s what I found.

1. I had 74.4GB free hard disk space before beginning the SP2 update. I had 137GB free after the process and before rebooting the system. So, I recovered 52.6GB of disk space.
2. The SP2 update includes two reboots. The second reboot comes after the second phase of the three phase update process.
3. My screen went text-only during the second phase of the update and 45,005 registry changes were made during this phase based on the messages on the screen. You can see a frame grab above from a video I recorded during this process.
4. There was still 137GB of free space remaining after the second reboot from the third update phase.

This is not news. But, I’m amazed every Patch Tuesday that Windows Update can bring a quad-core PC with 4GB of RAM running Windows Vista to its knees. You can see a typical Windows Task Manager performance chart snapshot above.

I don’t burn data files to CDs or DVDs often these days. But, when I do I always want to use the “Mastered” option that closes the disc after burning and is readable on most computers. “Live File System” is the DVD burn default and is near useless since I never want to use a DVD like a floppy, it is not readable on some systems, and it takes perhaps an hour to format the DVD for use. I never ever want to use it. It is especially useless when we can now buy large USB flash drives and external hard drives for very low prices.

The old “Mastered” style on the other hand is useful for burning family photos on a monthly basis for offsite storage. And yes, I can’t find any simple way to make it the default burning option. There’s probably a registry setting to do that. But, I haven’t gone hunting for it yet. So, I have to remember to manually change that option for the one or two DVDs I burn each month. And, oh yes, if I forget to do so, there is no way to stop the process short of bringing up the Task Manager and manually killing the process from there.

I haven’t looked at how Windows 7 Beta handles this since I’m running it on a DVD-less netbook. But, I’ll attach an external DVD later and report back.